AR Development

Apple is reportedly accelerating the development of smart glasses, as the company is ostensibly making a shift toward AI-centric hardware.

According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is ramping up development of its forthcoming smart glasses, which are slated to head into production as early as December 2026, with public release expected sometime in 2027.

Apple’s smart glasses are being positioned to compete with Meta and EssilorLuxottica’s most recent smart glasses, the report maintains.

While this mostly echoes previous reports from last October, Apple appears to be accelerating development, having recently distributed a broader set of glasses prototypes within its hardware engineering division.

According to an all-hands meeting with employees earlier this month, CEO Tim Cook supposedly also hinted that Apple would be pushing hard into AI devices, noting that the company was working on new “categories of products” centered around AI.

“We’re extremely excited about that,” Cook said in the internal meeting, saying “[t]he world is changing fast.”

Citing people familiar with Apple’s plans, the smart glasses (allegedly codenamed ‘N50’) are said to include two cameras: a high-resolution camera for photos and video, and another dedicated to computer vision tasks. The high quality onboard cameras and overall build quality are expected to set it apart from competing products, the report maintains.

Similar to Meta’s audio-only smart glasses though, Apple’s N50 hardware isn’t expected to include a display of any kind, instead relying on cameras, speakers and microphones for things such as phone calls, AI queries, listening to music, and capturing images.

Apple allegedly floated the idea of partnering with eyewear brands—similar to Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica or Google’s partnership with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster—the company seems to have more recently decided on developing in-house designs, which are said to arrive in a variety of sizes and colors.

“Early prototypes of the glasses connect via a cable to a standalone battery pack and an iPhone, but newer versions have the components embedded in the frame,” Bloomberg reports. “The design uses high-end materials, including acrylic elements intended to give the glasses a premium feel. Apple is already discussing launching the device in additional styles over time.”

This comes as Apple is investing more heavily in AI in effort to better compete with Google and OpenAI, which comes part and parcel with a critical redesign of Siri. The report also maintains Apple is working on an AI-powered pendant and AirPods with expanded AI capabilities—all three of which will rely on visual input.

Notably, the report maintains that all three will rely on connection to iPhone. Apple did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

EssilorLuxottica reported its Q4 2025 financial results, revealing the company sold over seven million smart glasses last year.

The French-Italian eyewear conglomerate has been making smart glasses in partnership with Meta since the launch of the original Ray-Ban Stories in 2021.

Now, in its fourth-quarter results, EssilorLuxottica revealed it sold over seven million smart glasses last year—more than tripling sales since last reported.

In February 2025, the company announced it had sold two million Ray-Ban (Gen 1) smart glasses since release in late 2023.

It’s no wonder 2025 was a landmark year for the company though. Alongside Meta, EssilorLuxottica not only released a hardware refresh of its popular Ray-Ban Meta glasses, but also Oakley Meta HSTN, Oakley Meta Vanguard, and the $800 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses—the company’s first smart glasses to include a heads-up display.

In addition to its smart glasses efforts, EssilorLuxottica maintains that 2025 marked a further acceleration in its “evolution from an optical company into a leading medtech and big-data group,” owing to growth across both its Nuance Audio hearing-aid glasses and AI-driven healthcare platform.

While Meta and EssilorLuxottica are current market leaders in smart glasses, the XR wearables race has really only just begun. As it appears today, companies largely see smart glasses as a first step towards creating all-day AR glasses of the near future, with  potential contenders including Google, Samsung and reportedly also Apple.

Alibaba released a pair of display-clad smart glasses, ostensibly looking to go toe-to-toe with Meta Ray-Ban Display, which launched in the US for $800 back in September.

The News

China’s Alibaba, one the world’s largest retailers and e-commerce companies, just released its first smart glasses, called Quark AI Glasses, which run the company’s own Qwen AI model.

Seemingly China-only devices for now, Alibaba is now offering Quark AI in two fundamental versions across Chinese online and brick-and-mortar retailers:

• Quark AI Glasses S1: starting at ¥3,799 (~$540 USD), includes dual monochrome green displays
• Quark AI Glasses G1: starting at ¥1,899 (~$270 USD), no displays, sharing core technology of ‘S1’ model

Quark AI Glasses S1 is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 chipset and a low-power co-processor which drive dual monochrome green micro-OLED displays, boasting a brightness of up to 4,000 nits, according to South China Morning Post.

It also features a five-microphone array with bone conduction, 3K video recording which can be automatically upscaled to 4K, as well as low-light enhancement tech said to bring mobile phone-level imaging to smart glasses. Additionally, Quark AI Glasses S1 include hot-swappable batteries, which plug into the glasses’ stem piece.

You can see the English dubbed version of the Chinese language announcement below:

My Take

At least when it comes to on-paper specs, Quark AI Glasses S1 aren’t exactly a 1:1 rival with Meta Ray-Ban Display, even though both technically include display(s), onboard AI, and the ability to take photos and video.

While Meta Ray-Ban Display only feature a single full-color display, Quark S1’s dual displays only offer monochrome green output, which limits the sort of information that can be seen.

Quark S1 also doesn’t come with an input device, like Meta Ray-Ban’s Neural Band, limiting it to only voice and touch input. That means Quark S1 user won’t be scrolling social media, pinching and zooming content, or other nifty UI manipulation.

Still, that might be just enough—at least one of the world’s largest e-commerce, cloud infrastructure, and FinTech companies thinks so. Also not worth overlooking is Quark S1’s unique benefit of being tightly integrated into the Qwen AI ecosystem, as well as the Chinese payment infrastructure for fast and easy QR code-based payments with Alipay; that last one is something most Chinese smart glasses are trying to hook into, like Xiaomi’s own Ray-Ban Meta competitors.

Although the company’s Qwen AI model is available globally, I find it pretty unlikely that Alibaba will ever bring its first-gen models of Quark AI Glasses S1/G1 outside of its usual sphere of influence, or meaningfully intersect with Meta’s supported regions.

Trace, a startup founded by former Magic Leap engineers, today announced the launch of a new augmented reality creation platform the company hopes will become the “Canva of AR”.

The News

Trace says it’s targeting everyone from global brands to independent creators wanting to build location-based immersive AR content, according to a recent press statement.

Notably, the platform doesn’t require coding or advanced design expertise, allowing users to design, drop, and share interactive AR experiences across mobile devices, headsets, and AR glasses.

To boot, Trace says it’s launching the platform at a pivotal moment; Adobe has officially discontinued its Aero AR platform, and Meta’s Spark AR platform was retired in January 2025. To seize the moment, Trace is offering three free months of its premium plan to Aero and Spark users who migrate to its platform.

“Even as XR devices become more capable, the creator ecosystem is still really limited,” said Martin Smith, Trace’s CTO and co-founder. “Empowering creators to build and share their vision is such an important part of the picture, whether they’re an educator, an artist, or a Fortune 500 brand. Trace runs anywhere, scales instantly, and supports the fidelity AR deserves.”

Founded in 2021, Trace has already worked with a host of early enterprise adopters, including ESPN, T-Mobile, Qualcomm, Telefónica, Lenovo, and Deutsche Telekom, who have used Trace for marketing, visualization, employee training, and trade show installations at Mobile World Congress and the Hip Hop 50 Summit.

Trace’s creation platform is available to download for free on iPhone and iPad through the App Store, with an optional premium subscription available starting at $20 per month. Creations can currently be viewed through the Trace Viewer app available for free on the App Store and Google Play, and users can import their existing 3D assets in the Web Studio, available at studio.trace3d.app.

My Take

There’s a reason Meta and Adobe haven’t put a massive amount of effort into their respective AR creation platforms lately: all-day AR glasses are still relatively far away, as the usual cadre of XR headset and glasses creators are only now stepping into smart glasses ahead of what could be a multi-year leadup to all-day AR glasses of the future.

Still, enterprise-level AR activations on mobile and mixed reality headsets, like Apple Vision Pro and Quest 3, can turn more than a few heads, making a quick and easy no-code solution ideal for companies and independent creators looking for a selective reach.

I would consider Trace’s strategy of offering former Adobe Aero AR and Meta Spark AR a pretty shrewd move to get some market share out of the gate too, which is increasingly important since it’s the company’s sole occupation—and not a side project like it was for Adobe and Meta.

The more challenging test will be to see how Trace grows in that interminable leadup to wide-spread AR glasses though, and how it weathers the competition sure to come from platform holders looking to offer similarly easy-to-use AR creations suites of the future.

While the platform’s wide target and ease of use are big pluses, I can see it more squarely fitting in the enterprise space than something regular consumers might latch onto—which is probably the ideal fit for a company founded by Magic Leap alumni, who have undoubtedly learned a sharp lesson first hand. Magic Leap’s early flirtations with prosumers in 2018 with the launch of Magic Leap One eventually forced the company to pivot to enterprise two years later.

Meta announced it’s shipping out Project Aria Gen 2 to third-party researchers next year, which the company hopes will accelerate development of machine perception and AI technologies needed for future AR glasses and personal AI assistants.

The News

Meta debuted Project Aria Gen 1 back in 2020, the company’s sensor-packed research glasses which it used internally to train various AR-focused perception systems, in addition to releasing it in 2024 to third-party researchers across 300 labs in 27 countries.

Then, in February, the company announced Aria Gen 2, which Meta says includes improvements in sensing, comfort, interactivity, and on-device computation. Notably, neither generation contains a display of any type, like the company’s recently launch Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses.

Now the company is taking applications for researchers looking to use the device, which is said to ship to qualified applicants sometime in Q2 2026. That also means applications for Aria Gen 1 are now closed, with remaining requests still to be processed.

To front run what Meta calls a “broad” rollout next year, the company is releasing two major resources: the Aria Gen 2 Device Whitepaper and the Aria Gen 2 Pilot Dataset.

The whitepaper details the device’s ergonomic design, expanded sensor suite, Meta’s custom low-power co-processor for real-time perception, and compares Gen 1 and Gen 2’s abilities.

Meanwhile, the pilot dataset provides examples of data captured by Aria Gen 2, showing its capabilities in hand and eye-tracking, sensor fusion, and environmental mapping. The dataset also includes example outputs from Meta’s own algorithms, such as hand-object interaction and 3D bounding box detection, as well as NVIDIA’s FoundationStereo for depth estimation.

Meta is accepting applications from both academic and corporate researchers for Aria Gen 2.

My Take

Meta doesn’t call Project Aria ‘AI glasses’ like it does with its various generations of Ray-Ban Meta or Meta Ray-Ban Display, or even ‘smart glasses’ like you might expect—even if they’re substantively similar on the face of things. They’re squarely considered ‘research glasses’ by the company.

Cool, but why? Why does the company that already makes smart glasses with and without displays, and cool prototype AR glasses need to put out what’s substantively the skeleton of a future device?

What Meta is attempting to do with Project Aria is actually pretty smart for a few reasons: sure, it’s putting out a framework that research teams will build on, but it’s also doing it at a comparatively lower cost than outright hiring teams to directly build out future use cases, whatever those might be.

While the company characterizes its future Aria Gen 2 rollout as “broad”, Meta is still filtering for projects based on merit, i.e. getting a chance to guide research without really having to interface with what will likely be substantially more than 300 teams, all of whom will use the glasses to solve problems in how humans can more fluidly interact with an AI system that can see, hear, and know a heck of a lot more about your surroundings than you might at any given moment.

AI is also growing faster than supply chains can keep up, which I think more than necessitates an artisanal pair of smart glasses so teams can get to grips with what will drive the future of AR glasses—the real crux of Meta’s next big move.

Building out an AR platform that may one day supplant the smartphone is no small task, and its iterative steps have the potential to give Meta the sort of market share the company dreamt of way back in 2013 when it co-released the HTC First, which at the time was colloquially called the ‘Facebook phone’.
The device was a flop, partly because the hardware was lackluster, and I think I’m not alone in saying so, mostly because people didn’t want a Facebook phone in their pockets at any price when the ecosystem had some many other (clearly better) choices.

Looking back at the early smartphones, Apple teaches us that you don’t have to be first to be best, but it does help to have so many patents and underlying research projects that your position in the market is mostly assured. And Meta has that in spades.